Chapter 2
1018 Words
I sat in utter darkness until dawn broke.
When the sky lightened, I headed straight for the study to dig out my marriage certificate. I was going to the clerk's office to file for divorce.
I tore the whole study apart, but the marriage certificate was nowhere to be found.
Instead, tucked deep at the back of the bookcase, I found a small locked box with a combination lock.
I tried three combinations. All wrong.
On the fourth try, I punched in Blair's birthday.
The lock snicked open.
Inside lay a thick stack of sketch manuscripts.
The first page was a drawing of a pair of hands.
Long, clearly defined knuckles, and on the ring finger sat a wedding ring identical to mine.
They were Ethan's hands.
An icy chill snaked from my toes all the way up to my skull as I flipped through page after page.
Ethan's sharp jawline. Ethan's collarbones. Ethan leaning against the headboard, a cigarette dangling between his fingers. Ethan's relaxed face as he slept...
The perspective in the drawings was intimate and suggestive, steeped in a sickening obsession.
Every single sketch had a date scribbled in the bottom-right corner.
My birthday. Our one-year dating anniversary. The day I was hospitalized for a bad stomach flare-up...
It all clicked into place. Every time he'd been absent, every time he'd bailed on our plans, he'd been here, fooling around with Blair.
This had been going on since the second month Ethan and I started dating, all the way up to last week.
It had even been going on the day before our wedding.
324 sketches in total.
Every single one was Ethan.
Back in college, I was one of the top students in the art department.
But Ethan never once let me sit him down and draw a full portrait of him.
He said sitting still that long was tiring, that taking photos was good enough...
I flipped to the last page. It showed Ethan, shirtless, sprawled on the sofa in the art studio, his gaze soft and doting.
Next to the drawing, in Blair's neat, delicate handwriting, beside a hand-drawn heart, it read: Everything that's hers will be mine. I love you, Ethan.
Everything that's mine?
Blair and I grew up together. We're cousins, but I'd always treated her like my own little sister.
I taught her how to draw. I pulled strings to get her a spot with a top professor. I put up my own money to help her open her own art gallery.
And all this time, she'd been planning to steal everything I had.
Buried at the very bottom of the box, I found one more document.
An Equity Transfer Agreement.
Party A: Ivy Lynn.
Party B: Ethan Miller.
Transfer content: Forty percent of the company's shares held by Party A, along with all corresponding voting rights.
The signature line was still blank.
My hands shook as I dug out the stack of papers I'd signed for our wedding.
I flipped through them one by one, my breath catching in my throat.
Sure enough, tucked in the corner of the last few pages, was a tiny, easy-to-miss addendum: The party who first files for divorce during the marriage will walk away with nothing.
Back then, Ethan had handed me the stack with a lazy smile and said, "It's just standard procedure. Go ahead and sign."
I'd trusted him that completely.
I didn't even bother to read it.
So this entire marriage had been a trap from the very start.
He didn't marry me out of guilt. He didn't marry me out of love.
He married me for that forty percent stake in the company.
Three years ago, his company hit a massive cash-flow crisis and was on the brink of bankruptcy.
It was me who drained the trust fund my dad left me to inject cash into his business. It was me who swallowed my pride and called in every single connection my dad had left to keep him afloat.
To pull him through that crisis, I turned down the chance to go to France for advanced studies. I traipsed all over the city with him, meeting client after client, begging for deals.
I worked my ass off to pull that dying, broken little company that was days away from collapsing into one of the top five in the entire industry.
And what was he doing this whole time? He was tricking me into signing over my shares.
So he could hand everything I'd built straight to Blair.
The front door lock rattled.
Ethan walked in.
His face dropped the second he saw what I was holding in my hands.
"Who told you that you could touch my stuff?" he snapped.
I held up the share transfer agreement.
"When were you going to get me to sign this? After we got back from our honeymoon? Or after you sweet-talked me into a good mood between the sheets?"
His dark eyes flickered.
"It's just for tax planning. You're overthinking this."
"Ethan, this is the whole reason you married me, isn't it?"
He stepped closer, reaching out to pull me into his arms.
"I can explain everything about the shares. But you have to believe me. I never once wanted to divorce you."
I dodged sideways out of his reach and barked a cold laugh. "You've already slept with Blair. What the hell makes you think I'd ever stay with you after that?"
A mocking smirk tugged at his lips.
"Because if you leave me, you'll have nothing left."
My breath caught in my throat.
He reached up to brush a stray strand of hair away from my face, his voice deceptively soft.
"Ivy, you're smart, mature, and capable. No one but you fits the role of Mrs. Miller."
"Don't worry. If you hate that I'm with Blair, I'll send her away tomorrow. Okay?"
I stared at the man I'd once loved with my whole heart, and every last bit of the love I'd held for him drained away completely.
All that was left was endless, crushing disappointment and crippling fear.
- Writer
